Dharampuriya: To answer your first question, [one advantage] that we clearly offer over our competitors is that [our product] is extremely affordable. [Editor’s note: prices range from US$400 per month per provider under a subscription model, or US$10,000 for the first provider, and US$5,000 for every additional full-time provider under an upfront-fee model.] It is extremely user friendly and our customer satisfaction level is in the high [percentage range]. What makes us unique [is that we have delivered] a software product to almost 25,000 doctors across the country in a span of … ten years.
Our big advantage is that because we are such a customer-focused company, we always get feedback from customers as to where they would like to see the product [heading]. Customer feedback has played a big role in advancing the product to the next level. We did that ten years ago, and we continue to do it today by holding roundtables and invite a focus group to give us feedback on the product and having annual user groups of anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 users sharing ideas … [about how] to make the product better…. That [is intertwined] with the focus and vision of the company to improve health care in this country.
Although there has been no study in medical literature to my knowledge showing that electronic health records improve the quality of health care, we have made significant enhancements to our version 8.0, which was released last year [that we hope will] show that certain functionalities will improve the quality of health care in this country.
In terms of staying competitive, we have always believed in staying at an affordable price point. [That has allowed us] to target smaller practices, which is the majority of the U.S. market — about 60% to 70% of U.S. practices have [only] one to three physicians. That has been one of our sweet spots…. We have been able to do that at an affordable price point by using as much [low-cost] infrastructure as we can … to build the software platform.